There were two rooms in the hotel, one set up with several multiplayer games, one with some single-player stations. I myself didn't get to play that much at first because I was tapped to help out with the setup; this consisted mostly of hauling 500(!) Halo T-shirts through the hotel and telling people not to get crumbs on the Xboxes.

Matt halted the proceedings twice, once to deliver his keynote address, and once to hold the raffle. There were always a few people who just ignored him and kept playing :)

During the keynote, Matt mentioned a few things that would be happening in the near future. The launch of the new Halo site, named Truth and Reconciliation. The launch of the mysterious Seventh Column, about which he said nothing more. The new Halo movie was a short featuring a drill instructor abusing a Grunt. Matt singled out some distinguished guests, including Marty O'Donnell accompanied by Mike Salvatori, Bob O'Donnell (voice of the Surly Dwarf), and an actor he identified as the voice of a Halo character he could not tell us about.

The game... Everything they said it would be an more. Calling Halo the next Half-Life doesn't say the half(heh) of it. Halo is going to set records and standards just as HL did.

Halo multiplayer: I don't see what everyone is complaining about regarding the controller. It's not huge, it fit my hands very well (as does the PS2 controller). The controls made sense as they were placed. After about an hour of multiplayer I was able to keep up with all the other fans (which didn't save me from the ass-kickings being handed out by Bungie guys with some time on their hands). The vehicle control was more difficult in that it is not exactly like other games, and it's very easy to over-steer and go out of control; the Warthog fishtails wildly. That doesn't stop driving it (or getting driven over by it) from being the most fun I have ever had in a computer game, period. The jeep is very... well... "bouncy". The low gravity and impact physics combine to make it very easy to send the jeep into the air, whether it be via grenades, the rocket launcher, or ramming it with the other jeep (on the level which I believe is named Blood Gulch). Flipping the jeep usually involves killing everyone on board and a few people nearby. Halo is one of those games you can tell stories about, with encounters and events in the game beyind "So then I blew that guy up, and that was cool!"

Best multiplayer moment: A 16-player CTF game on Blood Gulch. Someone jumps in the jeep and heads for the enemy base, accidentally running over a rock and sending the jeep flying. At the same moment, I run out of the base brandishing the flag, and shouting at my LAN-mates "I've got the flag! Someone give me a jeep!" Of course the jeep LANDS ON ME.